1960S Quotes

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

~ John Lennon

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

~ John Lennon

I know it's become fashionable to depict the police as sadistic Cossacks riding down innocent citizens, but I've become well enough acquainted with law-enforcement agencies across the country to know that's just not the case. Of course, a certain small percentage of policemen are irresponsible...but that doesn't justify the current unjust barrage of propaganda against a tribe of men who are hard-working, underpaid and daily risking their lives to protect us. I'm sure there are isolated instances of police brutality, but the rising crime rate and urban violence constitute a far, far more pressing problem.

~ Truman Capote

But to a Vietnamese peasant whose home means a lifetime of back-breaking labor, it will take more than presidential promises to convince him that we are on his side.

~ Morley Safer

In researching this book, I quickly discovered a surprising thing about the 1960s: the decade was not nearly as radical as we've been led to believe. In fact, the upheaval was really confined to a very narrow stratum of society. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, the 1960s was a conservative decade.

~ Jonathan Leaf

Cops and Robbers in 1965 England was still a kind of Ealing comedy: crimes rarely involved firearms. The denizens of F-wing were losers in a game they had been playing against the cops. In queues for exercise, the constant questions were 'What you in for, mate?', followed by 'What you reckon you'll get?' When Freddie and I responded with 'Suspicion of drug possession' and 'We're innocent, we'll get off' they would burst into laughter, offering: 'Listen, mate, they wouldn't have you in here if they had any intention of letting you off. You're living in dreamland, you are.

~ Joe Boyd

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds.

~ Jonathan Leaf

Too commonly sex does not have the dignity of a sacramental event because sex is thought to be the means of the search for self rather than the expression and communication of one who has already found himself, and is free from resort to sex in the frantic pursuit of his own identity.

~ William Stringfellow

This, too, is the Biblical description of work. In sin men lose their dominion over the creation which God gave them, and their relationship with this creation becomes toil. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for our of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:17-19)Work represents the broken relationship between men and the rest of creation. Men, literally, work to death.The fallenness of work, the broken relationship between men and the rest of creation which work is, involves both the alienation of men from nature and from the rest of creation, including the principalities and powers. In work men lose their dominion over the principalities and are in bondage to the principalities. Instead of men ruling the great institutions – corporations, unions, and so on – men are ruled by the great institutions.

~ William Stringfellow

Reckon your weakness as praise of God’s power, endure suffering in joy, risk your life on the veracity of Christ, count your loneliness a means of grace.

~ William Stringfellow

Don't be afraid. There is no more to fear. Do not fear rejection. If you fear rejection by another you do not love the other, though you may profess it. You are only being anxious for his love of you. The free man does not seek the love of others, nor fear that his love will be rejected, for rejection - as is known from the night Christ was betrayed - does not destroy love, and it does not destroy the one who loves. Don't be afraid, you are not alone.

~ William Stringfellow

My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger - Billy Connolly

~ Sherry Marie Gallagher

You cannot step a foot into the literature about the 1960s without being told how 'creative', 'idealistic', and 'loving' it was, especially in comparison to the 1950s. I fact, the counterculture of the Sixties represented the triumph of what the art critic Harold Rosenberg famously called the 'herd of the independent minds'. Its so-called creativity consisted in continually recirculating a small number of radical cliches; its idealism was little more than irresponsible utopianism; and its crusading for 'love' was largely a blind for hedonistic self-indulgence.

~ Roger Kimball

We -- the industrialized, technologized world -- have never been richer. And yet to an extraordinary extent we in the West continue to inhabit a moral and cultural universe shaped by the hedonistic imperatives and radical ideals of the Sixties. Culturally, morally the world we inhabit is increasingly a trash world: addicted to sensation, besieged everywhere by the cacophonous, mind-numbing din of rock music, saturated with pornography, in thrall to the lowest common denominator wherever questions of taste, manners or intellectual delicacy are concerned. Marwick was right: 'The cultural revolution, in short, had continuous, uninterrupted, and lasting consequences'.

~ Roger Kimball

...And eventually, he (Charles Manson) testified to an empty court, as Bugliosi had convinced the presiding judge Older, that Manson's hypnotic powers might convince the jury he was innocent.

~ Nikolas Schreck

...TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned.

~ Pete Hautman

We tried to change Vietnam. Instead, Vietnam changed us.

~ Tony Thomson

FAITES L'AMOUR ET RECOMMENCEZ (make love and make it again)

~ Anouk Markovits

People believe what they want to believe. Even if it isn’t true.

~ Julian Houston

I understand, Bill. Because I tell myself a lot of stories to help me sleep at night. Stories about how Babe was my dearest friend, and I never betrayed her. Stories about how you and I had a great love, not just an occasional roll in the hay whenever she was out of town. Stories about how wonderful life was back then, when none of us told each other the truth, but so what? It was all so beautiful, wasn’t it? It was all so lovely and gracious. Not like it is now.

~ Melanie Benjamin

I hate being so nostalgic about the Sixties.

~ David Bailey

On first impressions, John seemed more cynical and brash than the others, Ringo the most endearing, Paul was cute, and George, with velvet brown eyes and dark chestnut hair, was the best-looking man I'd ever seen. At the break for lunch I found myself sitting next to him, whether by accident or design I have never been sure. We were both shy and spoke hardly a word to each other, but being close to him was electrifying.

~ Pattie Boyd

I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of coffee shops as they were defined in New York—cheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know.

~ Edmund White

For historical currents do not irresistibly propel themselves and everyone in their path. No matter what their broader structural or ideological roots, they both carry along and are carried along by people, who are not merely passengers of history, but pilots as well.

~ Doug Mcadam

You’re drunk. They’d arrest you on the spot.” “What? There’s no law against driving a car when you’re drunk.” He swayed back and forth while he spoke. “Besides, I’m not drunk.” “Fine, you’re not drunk, but you’ve been drinking and there is a law that says you can’t drive when you’re drunk. It’s called driving while intoxicated or driving under the influence or something like that. I’ll drive.” “Hmmm… Never heard of it. Okay- you drive.

~ Ian Mcclellan